The look on Naomi’s face seemed as if she was almost proud of herself and as if she expected me to be proud of her too. She stood there smiling and waited for me to give her some sort of thanks.
But, as I became shell-shocked, Michael’s voice started growling. “When I get out of this greenhouse, I’m going to—”
“Careful,” Naomi warned as she interrupted Michael’s threatening growl. “You’re on my good side for the moment, simply because my niece is in love with you. But that still doesn’t hold a lot of water with me, so don’t give me a reason to eliminate you too.”
“But I love all three of them,” I pleaded with her. “Please let Adam and Rob go, or tell us where they are and let us out of here.”
“No,” she said. “You’re just being ridiculous now. No one can love three men. It’s sick enough to love one. I’ll let you have one source of perversion, simply because none of us are perfect. This is your chance at everything that you’ve wanted, and I offer it to you as my gesture of goodwill and peace between the two of us, Lisette. You can have the man you love, and that sanctuary to fulfill your mother’s wish, and you and I can be friends. The rest of the extra stuff needs to be trimmed away. I don’t even want the money anymore. This is a chance for both of us to finally be happy.”
Naomi was mentally unhinged. She honestly thought that she was helping me, and that by getting rid of Adam and Rob, I would be happy and we could be friends. She saw the drama at the house between the three men and me, the jealousy, the push and pull of a love triangle that was sometimes perfect and sometimes torture. She thought that she could “fix” it by getting rid of them. She was sick, and it wasn’t even her fault. I realized that the only thing I could do to save us now, and hopefully not be too late to save Adam and Rob, was to get out of this greenhouse. And there was only one way that I knew how to attempt that.
I loosened Michael’s grip from around my waist and pulled away from him so that I could walk toward the front of the greenhouse.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
“Do you trust me?” I turned and whispered back.
“Always.”
“Then be ready.”
He didn’t know what he was supposed to be ready for, but Michael was good about acting and thinking on the spot under pressure. He stayed behind me at a careful distance so that he could still reach out for me if needed, and I walked toward the locked glass door to talk with my aunt.
“You’re right,” I said to her. “Thank you.”
Even though she had wanted a show of gratitude and understanding from me, she was completely taken aback and suspicious of me when I said it. I could tell by her furrowed brow that she didn’t quite believe that I was being sincere and wondered what I was playing at.
“I am the happiest when I am just with Michael, like we were tonight. I get so torn and indecisive when there are too many men around. I can’t seem to pull away from Rob and Adam myself, but now that you have pulled them away for me; I can see that you are right. I do want to be happy with just Michael, and to run The Sanctuary, and to be friends with you. You are my last living family member. But I still don’t want Adam and Rob to be hurt. They’re not bad people, despite them being men.”
I was really hopeful that my words would sound believable and convincing. They didn’t sound that way to me, but then again, I knew that I was lying.
“Tell me that you didn’t kill them,” I asked as I braced myself for whatever answer she might have given.
“They’re not dead,” she said. “I didn’t even hurt them at all. I just put them away somewhere so they won’t be able to bother you or interfere anymore.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. They weren’t dead and they weren’t hurt. I believed her. She had no reason to lie about it because she was the one with all the power right now.
“Okay,” I said as I conceded to her delusions. “Then I accept and appreciate your help. What would you like to do when we get back to The Sanctuary tonight?”
I could hear Michael shifting on his feet behind me and I knew that he was biting at the bit to ask what the hell I was doing. But I needed him to stay quiet for just a few minutes longer.
Naomi looked at me cautiously as if she still couldn’t believe that it was going to be this easy to get me to go along with her. I needed to say something else to convince her to buy into this completely.
“Hey, I know,” I said with a smile. “How about we have a movie night? That’s something that we haven’t done since I was a kid.”
I tried to make my face look as realistically excited as I could possibly muster.
“Okay,” she said as the corners of her lips started to turn upward and form a smile. “But none of those romantic chick-flicks. You know how much I hate that shit.”
She pointed over toward Michael.
“He can come, but if the two of you start making out or anything during the movie then I’m going to cut your tongues out.”
I inadvertently gave her a shocked and horrified look before I was able to catch myself.
“Relax,” she laughed. “I was just kidding. Well, I still don’t want you to make out during the movie, but I was kidding about cutting your tongues out. Michael is safe from me, for as long as you still continue to like him.”
“Okay,” I said with a smile so fake that it hurt my teeth. “Are you going to let us out now?”
Naomi seemed to bristle at my question.
“I mean, unless you’re going to somehow find a way for us all to watch a movie inside the greenhouse.”
I chuckled to make it seem extra nonchalant.
Naomi looked between me and Michael, and then must have decided that she believed the act that I was putting on, because she reached out and opened the lock on the glass door.
As soon as he heard the lock slide free from the mechanism that held it, Michael knew exactly what it was that I had asked him to be ready for. He rushed past me and out the door, tackling Naomi before she even had time to react to him. Naomi screamed in shock and I heard the cracking sound of her head hitting the floor of the roof. That had to have hurt. She wrestled with Michael against the ground, but he had a firm grip on her, at least he did have a firm grip on her for the first moment or so of their scuffle. Naomi somehow managed to slip out of his arms and got to her feet as Michael reached out to grab her again. She ran to the edge of the roof and Michael got up to run toward her again too.
“No!” I shouted to him as I held my arm out in front of me.
He looked back and me and paused as he waited for me to tell him why I had stopped him from getting hold of my aunt again.
“Stay where you are,” I said to him. “Please.”
There was something about the way that Naomi perched next to the edge of the roof that caused me alarm. There was a section of roof that had no border to it, just an open drop to the ground, and it was the exact section that she was standing in front of. She was carefully balanced with one foot on the rooftop and one on the thin strip of edging that stood between her and the plummet to the city streets below. I held both hands out in front of me as if somehow my fingers could root both her and Michael in their places and avoid anything else horrible from happening.
“You tricked me,” Naomi said with a sour face that looked as if she might actually cry. “You betrayed me.”
